SPEAKERS
Thierry De Montbrial
Thierry de Montbrial founded the French Institute of International Relations (Institut français des relations internationales, Ifri) in 1979. He has been its President since then.
In 2008, he launched the World Policy Conference. He is a former Professor at the Ecole Polytechnique since 1974 and chaired its Department of Economics between 1974 and 1992. He is Professor Emeritus at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers. He was the Chairman of the French-Austrian Center for European Economic Convergence (1985-2015).
He serves on the International Advisory Board of Lafarge and chairs the International Advisory Board of OCP Group (Morocco). He is on the Board of Directors of Renault Foundation. He was a member of the Steering Committee of the Bilderberg Meetings (1976-2012). He was a member of the Consultative Board to the WTO Director-General, Geneva (2004-2005) and a committee member for the French White Paper on Defence and Security (1993-1994; 2007-2008).
Joseph S. Nye
Joseph S. Nye Jr. is a University Distinguished Service Professor, Emeritus at Harvard University and former Dean of the Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He received his bachelor's degree summa cum laude from Princeton University,won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University, and earned a PhD in political science from Harvard. He has served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, Chair of the National Intelligence Council, and Deputy Under Secretary of State for Security Assistance, Science and Technology. His most recent books include The Power to Lead; The Future of Power; Presidential Leadership and the Creation of the American Era; and Is the American Century Over. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the British Academy, and the American Academy of Diplomacy. In a recent survey of international relations scholars, he was ranked as the most influential scholar on American foreign policy, and in 2011, Foreign Policy named him one of the top 100 Global Thinkers.
CO-CHAIRS
Karl Kaiser
Karl Kaiser was educated at the Universities of Cologne, Grenoble, and Oxford and taught at the Universities of Bonn, Johns Hopkins (Bologna), Saarbruecken, Cologne, the Hebrew University, and Harvard's Departments of Government and Social Studies and the Kennedy School. He founded the Program on Transatlantic Relations of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, which was moved to the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs where he is now a Senior Associate. He served as Director of the German Council on Foreign Relations, Bonn/Berlin and as advisor to Chancellors Brandt and Schmidt. He is a recipient of the Atlantic Award of NATO and of an Honorary Doctorate of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is the author or editor of numerous articles and books in the fields of world affairs and European politics.
Vivien Schmidt
Vivien Schmidt is Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration and Professor of International Relations and Political Science in the Pardee School at Boston University. At CES, Schmidt is Co-Chair of the European Union seminar. She is also Honorary Professor at LUISS Guido Carli University in Rome. Recent books include Europe’s Crisis of Legitimacy: Governing by Rules and Ruling by Numbers in the Eurozone (OUP 2019), Resilient Liberalism in Europe’s Political Economy (with M. Thatcher, 2013), and Democracy in Europe (OUP 2006), named by the European Parliament as one of the ‘100 Books on Europe to Remember.’ Recent awards include decoration as Chevalier in the French Legion of Honor, the European Union Studies Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship for her current project on the “Rhetoric of Discontent: A transatlantic comparison of the rise of populism.”
